Usage of pot-like containers to facilitate growing, transporting and marketing of plants has long been known. Two aspects of container use which have continued to present special challenges are: (1) storage of empty containers, especially before they are filled with growing medium and one or more plant organisms and (2) keeping large quantities of planted containers organized and protected during the various distribution and marketing stages encountered throughout the nursery and lawn and garden retailing industry. Space limitations are a primary consideration in either case. Where the containers that are to be used for plant potting operations either are not amenable to stacking within each other or may be stacked only in very limited quantities, considerable storage space must be provided either on or off the premises where potting operations take place. Even where a significant storage area may be available, it still may not be possible for a plant grower to accommodate the number of containers that may ultimately be required without the necessity of obtaining multiple pot shipments, which for any of a number of reasons could be subject to delays which may in turn have an adverse impact on the grower's ability to complete its potting activities in a timely and cost effective manner. Once plants have been potted, space limitations continue to loom not only at the grower's facility as the plants await shipment to other destinations, but also on board transport means where it frequently is desired to include in the lowest number of shipments as many potted plants as practicable without incurring significant risk of plant damage. At retail establishments, similar demands also are felt as retailers seek to display and maintain as wide a variety of potted plants as possible in the least amount of area.
Over the years, various efforts have been made to provide container designs aimed at alleviating such space-related problems. In the late nineteenth century, a plant pot that lent itself to nesting and stacking became known. The principal feature of the pot, which was disclosed in U.S. Design Pat. No. 20,336, was the base which, according to the disclosure, had an annular rim divided into a number of sections by recesses radiating from a central recess formed by and within the rim.
More recently, a plant container with stacking capabilities has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,057,931. The container is molded from plastic and is provided with an annular rim adjacent the bottom thereof, which supports the pot so that the bottom surface is spaced upwardly from a surface supporting the pot. The rim of the pot is provided with a plurality of apertures defined and positioned therein so that the upper edges of two similar pots may be positioned to support one pot on the lower two. While the aperture arrangement described by the referenced patent may be employed to vertically stack the pots in an interlocking manner, it the stacking capability of the pots is limited to a single row of pots. While more than one row of pots may be stacked beside one another the pots in adjacent rows may not likewise be interlocked to produce a pot array having both lateral and longitudinal stability.
The plant pot of the present invention includes features which not only make it highly nestable with others when it is empty, but also make it vertically stackable with others after planting in a configuration that will be both laterally and longitudinally interlocked.